The barbarous inhumanity of Tory immigration policy is matched only by its idiocy over the Rwanda scheme, so we need united action to fight for humanity, argues John Westmoreland

The morning after the vote on the Rwanda Bill, the front pages are all about Rishi Sunak’s ‘survival’ after the opposition of right-wing Conservatives came to naught. However, the abstention of 25 Conservative MPs is just a truce in the civil war that is set to tear the Tories apart. In the New Year, the ERG Chair, Mark Francois promises to pile pressure on Sunak to ‘toughen up’ the Bill. ‘Toughen up’ really means breaking international law and makingBritain immune to human-rights legislation.

War on humanity is the Tories’ Christmas message: in Ukraine, in Palestine, and the UK. And their propaganda is often on a par with 1930s fascism. For example, Robert Jenrick told Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday that Britain couldn’t cope with ‘mass, uncontrolled immigration’, and that people protesting for a ceasefire in Gaza ‘don’t have British values’.

A performative attack on desperate and vulnerable people

The Rwanda Bill makes a mockery of parliament and the public by introducing legislation that has the sole purpose of diverting attention from the chaos of Tory rule. It fails on its own terms of financial cost and of preventing asylum seekers from successfully finding refuge in the UK.

Rwanda can take just 200 people a year, yet the Tories’ racist rhetoric speaks of ‘swarms’ and ‘hordes’ of people seeking asylum. It simply doesn’t make any logistical sense; it is just about being seen as tough. The Home Office figures say that the cost of sending one person to Rwanda will be £170,000, but providing refuge here would only cost £106,000. Home Secretary James Cleverly has talked this up as a sign of his commitment to solving the ‘crisis’.

The subterfuge of presenting the plan as a means of disrupting the ‘business plans’ of people-smuggling gangs is to avoid talking about the real causes of displaced persons seeking refuge, and to pretend to care about the gangs’ victims. For example, many Afghans who served British interests in the invasion and war that Britain fought in Afghanistan are seeking asylum because their lives are in danger, and they naturally suppose that the UK should offer them a safe haven. 

The Tories are publically attacking vulnerable and desperate people. The greater the inhumanity of their plans, the more hateful their rhetoric becomes. They want to channel the racism, bred from the despair that austerity has generated, into a vote for the Tories. The Rwanda plan will do nothing for the ‘ordinary British people’ (whoever they are) that the Tories claim to be defending. It is nothing more than a diversion from the chaos caused by austerity, privatisation, and cuts to public services.

Rwanda’s safe: Just like that!

Tommy Cooper, as older readers will know, was a comic genius. He masqueraded as a magician who would fumble his way through a magic trick and then hold up a mangled playing card and go: ‘You see? Just like that!’

Rishi Sunak differs from Tommy Cooper in any number of ways – it might make a good Christmas quiz – but the main one is that only Tommy knew that the sleight of hand was meant as a joke. Sunak, on the other hand, finds the world of illusion more comfortable than the quicksand of reality.

Reality check: Rwanda is not a safe place to send asylum seekers. President Paul Kagame has been referred to as the ‘Putin of Africa’ (not because he is a rabid humanitarian), and his party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, has been accused of taking part in extrajudicial killings.

Nevertheless, it is amazing how quickly things can change. A visit from James Cleverly, and a financial bung of £15 million set the scene for Sunak’s magic touch: a law that says,whatever the evidence, Rwanda is safe. How do we know? Because it says so in law!

Nobody since King Canute has thought that reality could simply be magicked away until now. But the magic goes further than this. The legislation says that no appeals can be heard from anyone deported to Rwanda, in any court in the land because the law says there is no foundation for such an appeal on grounds of danger to life.

The party that bangs on about a ‘rules-based world order’ has gone rogue. The Tory right is smugly shouting about how this will stop interference from Europe and over-paid human rights lawyers, but when they return to planet reality they are in for a shock.

Sunak’s law against reality won’t stop appeals to international law, it will increase them,because British courts will be rendered useless. And that’s not all. There will be more human-rights lawyers eating up money that the Rwanda plan is supposed to be closing down. Just what the hard-up ordinary British worker that the Tories are protecting needs – more lawyers.

In fact, James Cleverly went to great trouble, on his visit to Rwanda last week, to get the country well lawyered up in anticipation of protests from the human-rights brigade. As a safety net – just in case Sunak’s magic somehow failed to work – Cleverly is prepared to pay for a team of British lawyers to monitor the proceedings in Rwanda.

In particular, the lawyers will be looking out for refoulement. Refoulement is where Rwanda decides that instead of keeping asylum seekers safe, they decide to deport them back to their country of origin. Because Rwanda has already done precisely that, the Law Lords rejected the first Rwanda Bill. The idea that Rwandan policy going forward will be dictated by a bunch of British lawyers is laughable, but it is not a joke, lives are at stake.

Towards a workers’ democracy

The Rwanda plan is partly a farce, but mainly a tragedy. It is useful in that it exposes what is at the heart of Tory thinking, as well as Labour’s feeble opposition. The Tory right is further away from mainstream politics than at any time in the history of that party. They openly attack the status quo, and show contempt for human rights and any laws that defend them. They are not going to be stopped by Sunak’s appeasement or Starmer’s posturing. They don’t recognise any faults in the system they serve, and are prepared to use barbaric methods to defend it. We are facing a cold-hearted Tory Christmas and a hate-filled New Year that could lead us to a very dark place.

It will be doubly tragic if the wider labour movement fails to recognise that our rights are closely tied up with those of capitalism’s other victims and wage a struggle for justice. The failure of Westminster politics is an issue that trade unions and campaigning organisations have to address. We need joined-up action over war, environmental breakdown, and poverty. And we have to get on the front foot over immigration – the one issue that the Tories dominate.

The working class is the reservoir of human compassion and solidarity that can be used to shape the future. The New Year resolution we need to make is to push every struggle to the maximum and change the language of political debate in favour of humanity.